Ingredients to avoid
totalbeauty.com has an easy to follow, researched list of ingredients to avoid when buying beauty products. I know you’ve read these like a thousand times, and when you look at the ingredients list on a bottle of shampoo at the supermarket you can’t remember the bad ones.
Below, I’ve listed the bad ingredients by name, and attempted to make a memory devices to help us remember them. For example, I have Sodium Laureth down-pat now, because it bubbles like soda and laureth rhymes with death – Sodium Laureth – soda of death).
- Sodium Laureth (aka 1,4-Dioxane) found in your bubbling products. Remember, ‘soda of death’
- Phthalates found in deodorants. Remember, it rhymes with ‘pilates’ where you’re likely to use deodorant.
OK, so to be honest, I only came up with memory devices for those two. Here are the others. Can you help me out here?
Thimerosal in your mascara
Dibutyl Phthalate or DBP, Toulene, Formaldehyde in nail poilsh
Quaternium-15, DMDM Hydantoin, Imidazolidinyl Urea and Diazolidinyl Urea
Image from http://www.magentastudios.com
D5 Creation
It’s really hard to find shampoo that doesn’t contain sodium laureth sulphate but some, including baby shampoo and some salon varieties, have it in lesser amounts. My scalp hates it.
Yeah, I was surprised. Pantene, Tresemme, and most supermarket shampoos have it (but conditioners don’t). But I bought an organic one recently – expensive but reassuring. I think I might make a trip to the organic supermarket – presumeably they are a bit cheaper from there.
Amy: I’m pretty sure that if you can get organic shampoos like NOM at the supermarket (Thorndon New World has a particularly wide selection), they will be the same price or cheaper because they can buy them in greater bulk than the organic stores – but I’d be interested to hear back! Commonsense Organics definitely has a lot of interesting other products to try out anyway.
Hang on – that site is warning against sodium laureth not sodium lauryl sulfate – two different substances.
Start with Snopes’ article on the issue for some background and links.
Also, sodium lauryl sulfate is what makes shampoo, body wash, etc foam (which is why you won’t find it in conditioner).
It’s really only in there because generally people like a shampoo to foam nicely, so if you can do without bubbles (as weird as that may feel) you can totally do without SLS.
The Snopes article dispells some concerns around Sodium Laural Sulphate (SLS), but not Laureth (SLES) which is also used in shampoos, and implies no danger in SLS related products. But Wikipedia says: SLS has been shown to increase the frequency of canker sores among people with frequent recurring sores. While SLS is a known irritant, evidence and research suggest that SLES can also cause irritation after extended exposure in some people. Toxicology research …confirmed the disputation that SLES is a carcinogen. SLES and SLS, and subsequently the products containing them, have been found to contain parts-per-thousand to parts-per-million levels of the known carcinogen 1,4-dioxane, with the recommendation that these levels be monitored. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers 1,4-dioxane to be a probable human carcinogen. and so on.
Ecostore shampoo is brilliant. I don’t usually need styling product as it doesn’t strip my hair but still gets it clean. It has an ingredient in it called Laureth-2 which I’m a little concerned about though. Anyway, ecostore shampoo is up to about $10.95 in some supermarkets, but it only costs $6.60 to refill your 200ml bottle at Commonsense Organics. Super sweet!
Thanks for the Commonsense tip Shannon. I am using the Vanilla Ecostore shampoo at the mo and it’s great. Leaves hair very soft and smells lovely. Nice to know I can get it cheap next time.